“Given that the SPX was essentially at an all-time high on Tuesday morning (1882), in our view there has hardly been enough sustained weakness to consider Thursday’s action a washout, or a ‘good low’.”

He suggests we saw classic distribution yesterday, and we shouldn’t try to hard to find reasons for the selling, which might actually be healthy for our aging bull market:

“Thursday was a pretty classic distribution day (up volume, down price, down breadth vs. prior day). Many were looking for reasons as to why the market sold off, but we need to only look at how extended many areas of the market had become (small-caps and biotech in particular) to realize this is just part of a reversion to the mean, and is necessary if the Bull market is going to continue.”

Colin Cieszynski, senior market analyst at CMC Markets, says that current sentiment in markets is all over the place because of the uncertainty from the outcome in Crimea over the weekend .

We see big moves in gold, oil and wheat because of the referendum in Crimea. The markets are worried about the consequences if Crimea decides to leave Ukraine and eventually join Russia. Will there be violence, sanctions by US and European countries?

However, U.S. stock markets are using geopolitical uncertainty as an excuse to go lower as they are overly stretched and are due for a correction.

Nu Skin has a consent decree with the FTC from the 1990s where it agreed to follow explicit rules on product efficacy and earnings opportunity claims and has closely worked with the agency over the last several years (like most direct sellers) to ensure ongoing compliance.

The analysts reiterated the stock’s buy rating and price target of $110.

Apple Inc., Tesla Motors Inc., Facebook Inc., BlackBerry Ltd., and Netflix Inc. are among the most often searched tickers on MarketWatch. Here’s a quick look at how they are faring this week as the weekend looms.

Analyst Christopher Merwin noted that although the outlook on the mobile game industry is positive, he does not expect the growth to come at the expense of console-based game companies like Activision.

The comments addressed fears that console game publishers are likely to suffer as they compete with games played on mobile devices such as smartphones.

“Continued strength in utilities, healthcare, and consumer staples are broadly negative, and suggests that investors are positioning ahead of heightened volatility,” he said. “While [the] referendum might send shock waves, the whole world is on China watch to see if concerns of a debt crisis are validated.”

We mentioned Vix index being up (and trending higher over the past few months). It is up nearly 12% to 18. Here are a few tweets from Ryan Detrick, Sr. Technical Strategist at Schaeffer’s Investment Research:

Think someone is worried about the vote on Sunday? $VIX call volume today is 1.34 million so far. Could be second highest day since May.

About a quarter of hour until the closing bell, stocks are headed for small losses on the day and steep losses over the week. In fact, it will be their worst weekly decline since late January.

Investors stayed mostly on the sidelines today, unsure about the outcome of the vote in Crimea. Mostly Russian-speaking citizens of the peninsula will decide whether to remain as part of Ukraine or join Russia.

Western countries deem the referendum (and its expected outcome) illegal and have threatened sanctions against Russia. Talks between John Kerry and Sergey Lavrov fell apart.

All of that has unnerved investors, who sought safe havens just in case.

The market is closed, putting the final touch on an ugly week that saw the S&P 500 and the Dow post their biggest weekly declines since late January, while the Nasdaq clocked its biggest weekly percentage drop since April. Here’s how it looks:

S&P 500 — down 5.21 points, or 0.3%, at 1,841.13, for a weekly fall of 2%, ending a two-week wining streak.

DJIA — down 43.22 points, or 0.3%, at 16,065.67, contributing to a weekly decline of 2.4%. The Dow fell every day this week and also ended a two-week winning streak.

Nasdaq Composite — down 15.02 points, or 0.4%, at 4,245.40, for a weekly drop of 2.1%., ending a five-week run of gains. The Nasdaq has lost ground in six of the last seven sessions.

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